40% of US Electricity Is Now Emissions-Free (arstechnica.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. [...]
At this point last year, coal had produced nearly 20 percent of the electricity in the US. This year, it's down to 16.2 percent, and only accounts for 15.5 percent of October's production. Wind and solar combined are presently at 16 percent of year-to-date production, meaning they're likely to be in a dead heat with coal this year and easily surpass it next year. Year-to-date, wind is largely unchanged since 2022, accounting for about 10 percent of total generation, and it's up to over 11 percent in the October data, so that's unlikely to change much by the end of the year. Solar has seen a significant change, going from five to six percent of the total electricity production (this figure includes both utility-scale generation and the EIA's estimate of residential production). And it's largely unchanged in October alone, suggesting that new construction is offsetting some of the seasonal decline.
Hydroelectric production has dropped by about six percent since last year, causing it to slip from 6.1 percent to 5.8 percent of the total production. Depending on the next couple of months, that may allow solar to pass hydro on the list of renewables. Combined, the three major renewables account for about 22 percent of year-to-date electricity generation, up about 0.5 percent since last year. They're up by even more in the October data, placing them well ahead of both nuclear and coal. Nuclear itself is largely unchanged, allowing it to pass coal thanks to the latter's decline. Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment). But that's likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs. If we combine nuclear and renewables under the umbrella of carbon-free generation, then that's up by nearly 1 percent since 2022 and is likely to surpass 40 percent for the first time. "The only thing that's keeping carbon-free power from growing faster is natural gas, which is the fastest-growing source of generation at the moment, going from 40 percent of the year-to-date total in 2022 to 43.3 percent this year," notes Ars.
"Outside of natural gas, however, all the trends in US generation are good, especially considering that the rise of renewable production would have seemed like an impossibility a decade ago. Unfortunately, the pace is currently too slow for the US to have a net-zero electric grid by the end of the decade."
At this point last year, coal had produced nearly 20 percent of the electricity in the US. This year, it's down to 16.2 percent, and only accounts for 15.5 percent of October's production. Wind and solar combined are presently at 16 percent of year-to-date production, meaning they're likely to be in a dead heat with coal this year and easily surpass it next year. Year-to-date, wind is largely unchanged since 2022, accounting for about 10 percent of total generation, and it's up to over 11 percent in the October data, so that's unlikely to change much by the end of the year. Solar has seen a significant change, going from five to six percent of the total electricity production (this figure includes both utility-scale generation and the EIA's estimate of residential production). And it's largely unchanged in October alone, suggesting that new construction is offsetting some of the seasonal decline.
Hydroelectric production has dropped by about six percent since last year, causing it to slip from 6.1 percent to 5.8 percent of the total production. Depending on the next couple of months, that may allow solar to pass hydro on the list of renewables. Combined, the three major renewables account for about 22 percent of year-to-date electricity generation, up about 0.5 percent since last year. They're up by even more in the October data, placing them well ahead of both nuclear and coal. Nuclear itself is largely unchanged, allowing it to pass coal thanks to the latter's decline. Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment). But that's likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs. If we combine nuclear and renewables under the umbrella of carbon-free generation, then that's up by nearly 1 percent since 2022 and is likely to surpass 40 percent for the first time. "The only thing that's keeping carbon-free power from growing faster is natural gas, which is the fastest-growing source of generation at the moment, going from 40 percent of the year-to-date total in 2022 to 43.3 percent this year," notes Ars.
"Outside of natural gas, however, all the trends in US generation are good, especially considering that the rise of renewable production would have seemed like an impossibility a decade ago. Unfortunately, the pace is currently too slow for the US to have a net-zero electric grid by the end of the decade."
congrats. you're about halfway to Canadian level (Score:5, Informative)
Re:congrats. you're about halfway to Canadian leve (Score:5, Informative)
Sure but to put that in perspective the USA yearly uses now around 4,050TWh and Canada 563TWh which makes this 40% alone a little over 3x the total electricity generation of Canada.
Canada also has favorable geography for hydro so they can get 60% from that alone and surprisingly per capita Canadians use more electricity (i assume a lot is used by resource extraction)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That's not to say the US can't or shouldn't do better or that Canada is any less deserving of credit.
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Also, the largest province in Canada by area and second largest by population, Quebec is like 99% hydro, not so much in other areas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Canadians use a lot of energy to heat homes during the year, on top of the exorbitant amount used by the resource extraction industries.
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Sure the point is the original, my stats and your stats, none of them tell the whole story
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Even better - isn't it something like 59% hydro? It's nice that the bulk of it isn't generating nuclear waste products.
It probably also helps to have so many people living near Niagara Falls.
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Only in Quebec, about 99% hydro, Ontario has nuclear plants and Alberta still uses a lot of coal. Basically, Canada's numbers only look good because of Quebec.
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In Canada 2020, 31% was produced from natural gas and 48% was from burning oil.
Was there a giant influx in nuclear power plants being constructed since the pandemic? You're telling us that in 3 years, the primary sources of energy that made up 89% of Canada's energy consumption has been reduced to less than 15%, and replaced by nuclear power?
https://energy.ca/canadian-ene... [energy.ca]
I can see why Canadians are unaware and in disbelief at your claims lol.
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Indeed, most Canadians can't believe how they got it this good.
Because "Canadians" doesn't mean "Quebecois". It's Quebec that actually has massive hydro potential and supplies everyone else. Who are in a much worse position.
Hydro, solar and wind are utterly geography dependent.
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Re: congrats. you're about halfway to Canadian lev (Score:2)
There is no emission free electricity (Score:1)
While I am all for renewables, they are "low emission", not "emission free". Lying about the characteristics of a goal, regardless how noble, tarnishes that goal and gives its enemies ammunition.
And since the usual nil wits will chime in: No, nuclear is very much not "emission free" either and only gets a reasonable place by lying about its emissions and cost.
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Cost seems to be a result of the boondoggle that is US and often EU building costs for big projects, plus having so much in the way of delays that we don't have any crews who are actually skilled at doing it.
Do you have any citations that the emissions from nuclear energy aren't in line with solar and/or wind power?
And while, yeah, renewables are typically not "emission free", except that their emissions are normally a result of continued use of fossil fuels and such for resource production and manufacturin
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Do you have any citations that the emissions from nuclear energy aren't in line with solar and/or wind power?
No. But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry claims about itself over the years. 40 years of watching them lie, lie and lie some more will do that. What they currently mostly claim themselves is in line with wind/solar, but given their usual lies, that clearly is only a lower bound. There are various estimates not from the nuclear industry, up to and including some that say that nuclear is in line with fossiles if you do it honestly. I do not think the latter are credible either. My conclus
Re:There is no emission free electricity (Score:4, Insightful)
But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry
We know. It's a conspiracy. But you saw through it all. Glad we have you on our side Q.
Let's be serious now. You know emissions figures are independantly reported, right? You don't have to get your information from fake news conspiracy websites.
That is a TCO-type argument though and likely too complex for most people.
The irony of calling TCO complex, while your own reasoning is only about cost. You oversimplify by quite a stretch if you think this is only about throwing money at the problem. In the real world, you need to take other factors into consideration: mining resources, manufacturing capabilities, deployment capabilities, storage, parallelization of deployment. THIS is complex. Not your pseudo-bullshit about TCO because you read about a three-letter acronym somewhere on the internet.
Fortunately for us, people actually making descisions base them on facts and actual decision-making processes. Which is why most sensible countries are targetting a mix of nuclear, solar, wind, hydro and storage for their electricity generation.
And that we seem to be unable to reduce significantly, with "safe levels" already being out of reach.
Worldwide, you are right.
Some countries are within the "safe levels" margins though, maybe we could take a hint about how they did it:
- Sweden/Quebec (I know, not a country, but big enough): lots of hydro potential, perfect
- Uruguay: slightly less hydro potential, with a mix of solar/wind, next kind of perfect
- France/Norway: even less but still some hydro, complemented with nuclear/solar/wind
On the other hand, we have countries that have failed:
- Germany: closed its few nuclear plants, invested massively on only solar/wind, the 2nd biggest CO2 emitter in EU. Still burning a lot of coal/gas.
- Poland/China: late to the party, building nuclear/solar/wind, but still burning too much coal/gas
- US: failing to build nuclear plants in recent decades, letting China lead the way. Still burning a lot of coal/gas
With too many people still hallucinating that there is no problem or that we can still easily make 1.5C, I am not hopeful.
With too many people still hallucinating that there is no problem in not including nuclear in the list of technologies to help us reduce emissions, I am not hopeful.
You are part of the problem. What about you start being part of the solution?
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Also absolutely necessary in the fight against CO2 effects for the time being.
Shame we didn't really push thorium/molten salts a few decades ago. They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.
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Shame we didn't really push thorium/molten salts a few decades ago. They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.
Indeed. The sad part is that we are letting our (economic) ennemy, China, lead the way, and there is a high probability that they will end up selling us that technology in the long term... When did the US stop innovating and being the leader it was supposed to be? Or better question: why?
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We've sold the US the bill of goods that 'capitalism' is a system unto itself when it's actually just one side of a ledger. Corporations that exist solely to *exist* and extract money are monopolies waiting for an opportunity to become one.
We need the strong thorough regulation of gov't to ensure they do give back (taxes) and work towards societal goals instead of self interest.
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They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.
We really don't have an unsolved nuclear waste problem. We know exactly what the solution is -- reprocessing -- we just haven't wanted to implement it.
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solves one problem, creates another.
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Less but more dangerous waste no?
In terms of storage, no. Reprocessed and re-burned fuel is much easier to deal with because it's more radioactive, which means that it decays to a safe level faster. You only have to store it safely for less than 200 years, which is non-trivial but manageable, unlike waste that needs to be kept safe for almost-geologic timeframes.
and of course plutonium.
Yes, that's a real issue. Though it's manageable with careful tracking and good security. It's not like we don't already manage non-trivial amounts of the stuff. Also, the French
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Nuclear in some fashion is def required for the next 1-3 decades.
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"No. But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry claims about itself over the years."
Ah, so you're a scientist.
"Lying about it does not help, which is my argument here."
And a point you are demonstrating well by lying yourself.
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
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These are details that are only useful so that pencil-heads can argue that they are right.
Emissions from energy generation that are of concern are scalable emissions, not fixed emissions. All you are listing are fixed emissions. Office workers, LOL.
"Emission free" is meaningless anyway. Climate problems will not be solved by arguing over epsilon and then jacking off over winning that argument.
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
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We absolutely need it for another decade or two, though renewables and storage advancements are shaving that time every year.
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
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By literally every metric it's one of the worst options. Wildly expensive, wildly long time to deploy, risks like nothing else and the problem of waste that needs to be stored for literally longer than organized human society has existed.
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coal already does this just fine.
But with high CO2 emissions.
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You're post said the selling point of nuclear was it's baseload/non weather dependent capability.
We have something that can do that, it's coal. What nuclear provides is that baseload ability without the CO2 release. Hence my point. It's only positive metric is it's lack of CO2 release.
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yes, the (sole) advantage of nuclear is the lack of them. Not that it can provide baseload. You're post said the selling point of nuclear was it's baseload/non weather dependent capability.
You might want to read it in the context of what I also noted in terms of carbon emission intensity. I'd taken as read we'd be looking at low carbon emission not high carbon emission sources. Apologies if I didn't make that crystal clear. We'd be mad to keep any coal around, though, if there is any chance of ditching it.
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You assume the goal is "emission free" when it is not either. If you're going to be pedantic, you should be judged by your own standard.
Also, since you're so interesting in pedantry, it is interesting that you aren't precisely defining emissions here. Just what is the agenda?
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They just ignore manufacturing and maintenance and arrive at "magic!"
This is how you know you're dealing with liars.
"The whole truth and nothing but the truth."
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multiple intermittent sources overlap, significantly reducing need for peaker nat gas plants. i.e. windy at night, sunny in no wind.
The US won't be smart enough to utilize them but the EVs could be a massive battery pack, that will dwarf full grid scale storage.
One of the biggest issue for renewables is transmission. We can't always get it from A to B without massive bottlenecks of NIMBYism. TX wind could massively supply other areas, but since th
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2018 called. They want their long debunked memes back.
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
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This is the old, outdated data that came pre-2019 reckoning at IPCC, where they found pretty much all of their models running extremely hot and incompatible with reality.
Here's a better meta-analysis that attempts to bridge the massive differentials in studies, so it shows you both median and range:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
(Page 7)
For comparison, these are recent IPCC numbers:
Hydropower: approximately 4 g CO2e/kWh
Wind power: approximately 11 g CO2e/kWh
Nuclear power: approximately 12 g CO2e/kWh
Solar
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This is the old, outdated data that came pre-2019 reckoning at IPCC, where they found pretty much all of their models running extremely hot and incompatible with reality.
Do you have a reference for this.
I
Here's a better meta-analysis
Which shows wind and nuclear essentially tied, as I said.
As you can see, IPCC's problem with intermittents (as well as hydro and nuclear) continues, as they're not given a range, unlike fossil fuels. Instead they are quoted at the lowest possible number, and range is missing entirely.
They give a range for all of the sources. You are talking nonsense
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>Do you have a reference for this.
First result on startpage (anonymized google) for me:
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
There are plenty of others.
This is common knowledge for anyone interested in subject of climate and modelling. I will state that if you are unaware of this, you need to urgently get out of the messaging bubble you're in, because you missed the story of the century central to the topic of AGW modelling by IPCC and associated organisations.
In a nutshell, the problem is fundamentally in th
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>Do you have a reference for this.
First result on startpage (anonyr zed google) for me:
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
There are plenty of others.
This ismed ommon knowledge for anyone interested in subject of climate and modelling. I will state that if you are unaware of this, you need to urgently get out of the messaging bubble you're in,
I've been following it since the 1980s and have worked with climate scientists so I suspect I have more idea than you seem to have
because you missed the story of the century central to the topic of AGW modelling by IPCC and associated organisations.
In a nutshell, the problem is fundamentally in the IPCC mandate. They're not allowed to look into anything other than harm of global warming.
Where do you come up with this nonsense from? Have you ever read an AR? I have. They are pretty dull but contain lots of information about all sorts of climate change areas including modelling, data, power generation, potential effects, etc.
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>I've been following it since the 1980s and have worked with climate scientists so I suspect I have more idea than you seem to have
And yet, you didn't know about the biggest and most obvious error, and don't even know what the mandate of IPCC is.
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The IPCC was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options. Through its assessments, the IPCC determines the state of knowledge on climate change
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Oh wow, they actually removed the mandate text itself and only have a "mandate statement" on their own page instead. I guess that's their response for critique that came in 2020. Editorialize the actually binding text to pretend that problem isn't there.
It's actually worse than I thought. I had some faith that actual scientific wing would have some hold over the political wing at IPCC and get at least the most basic reforms pushed though, like the mandate reform. Instead we got the standard political "let m
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>as they're not given a range, unlike fossil fuels.
Word "unlike" before "fossil fuels" is there for a reason. Or do you not know that coal is a fossil fuel?
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I guess you can read my post that way, in which case I will grant you this. I was referring to latest numbers I could find, where it wasn't present, but I could've dug deeper.
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
Re: There is no emission free electricity (Score:2)
So we're back at square 1? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember that a few decades ago we were roughly 20% nuclear and 20% hydro, so 40% carbon free would just be returning to those days.
On the other hand, we've replaced a lot of coal from back then with natural gas(proportionally, we also generate a lot more power), so averaged out we're actually substantially lower for carbon dioxide per kWh.
Just keep in mind that, well, we tend to get the low hanging fruit first. After a point, continuing to increase wind and solar even more will become more complicated, and thus expensive. Increasing the proportion of nuclear would help, as would spreading and improving the ability for EVs to function as load leveling devices (IE not charging during high demand/low production periods, or maybe even returning electricity to the grid). The development and spread of, well, building/house level UPS systems that are smart enough to charge when power is cheap (IE demand low/production high) would help as well. From what I've read, sodium-ion might be good for this - it doesn't have the weight advantage of lithium-ion, but it's substantially cheaper per kWh, and isn't significantly less dense, volume wise.
But all the above is expensive to do.
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Even if we were at square 1 (we aren't), we'd now be running in the opposite direction. Try not to be too nihilistic?
Keep in mind the actual cost curves we see. Solar and wind are certainly still seeing decreasing cost/kWh.
What's more expensive to do is to dig up carbon, sewer the emissions into the atmosphere, and then think that there are somehow cost savings now or in the future.
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Keep in mind the actual cost curves we see. Solar and wind are certainly still seeing decreasing cost/kWh.
While solar and wind may keep getting cheaper, they are likely to plateau sooner or later, with gains becoming marginal once economy of scale is reached.
Also, keep in mind that I expanded from just the generation, and started focusing on the adaptations required for high levels of solar/wind, especially in a grid that is effectively 0% hydrocarbon based. At that point you need to supply massive amounts of dispatchable power, as well as be able to shed demand to a large extent.
These are the modifications th
Re: So we're back at square 1? (Score:2)
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In the UK some suppliers are paying users to reduce their consumption at peak times, and offering very low rates when demand is low.
It's proven to be popular, the only down side being that it favours people who can afford large batteries and home EV charging. But that's the UK for your, the less well off always get left out.
90% renewables is easy and cheap. It gets more expensive beyond that point, but the cost is more than offset by the very low cost of renewable energy.
Re: So we're back at square 1? (Score:2)
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In the UK some suppliers are paying users to reduce their consumption at peak times, and offering very low rates when demand is low.
After establishment of a market for electricity supply in the UK, there have been times where the price, at the wholesale level, has gone negative.
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> I remember that a few decades ago we were roughly 20% nuclear and 20% hydro,
No, you don't, because that was never the case in the United States in the entire history of electrification. Even at its peak circa 2008, Nuclear + ALL renewables was under 30%. I remember back in 2008-2009 when EVs were first hitting the mass market with the LEAF, and having these discussions about "coal fired cars" because the US grid was still about 50% coal.
20% Nuclear + 20% hydro? Never happened [eia.gov].
=Smidge=
More Emissions not Less (Score:5, Insightful)
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You will not reduce consumption. Change your goals.
Re: More Emissions not Less (Score:4, Informative)
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That trend in the UK is going to reverse as transportation and heating moves to electricity.
It will. Overall energy use will likely decline but change source.
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https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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"the data actually shows is that we are using increasing amounts of electricity"
The data does not show that. Electricity consumption in the US reached a plateau in 2011. Electricity from fossil fuels has been declining for years. Even NG production has declined as a percentage of the total.
Re: More Emissions not Less (Score:2)
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per capita? PER CAPITA? Which are you hoping this says about you? Bad faith liar or ignorant fool?
Re: More Emissions not Less (Score:2)
Re: More Emissions not Less (Score:2)
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per capita? PER CAPITA? Which are you hoping this says about you? Bad faith liar or ignorant fool?
I'd say using per capita data makes him careful with numbers, using metrics that make comparisons meaningful. Using totals obscures the truth in the same way that using nominal dollars does.
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"You mean there was a blip"
No I mean there was a plateau and it has remained roughly constant for 13 years.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Better source without paywall bullshit;
https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]
General rule is don't link to Statista... it's lazy at the best of times, unhelpful and inaccessible most of the time.
=Smidge=
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Nobody won an election by advocating reduced consumption
Holy Christmas (Score:2)
Manchin v Sanders (Score:2)
Bernie votes against gun control because that's what his voters want. Manchin votes a pro-coal position because that's what HIS voters want. Sadly that's how politics works - at least in a functioning democracy...
40% or 20%? (Score:2)
IRENA https://www.irena.org/ [irena.org] puts the USA at 126th out of the 224 countries it monitors. The USA has a poorer renewables share than Russia, Mexico, & Venezuela.
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The article danced around that part, but the 20% or so they left out was nuclear.
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If you are going to quote statistics, why don't you provide a link so that we can verify them? Let's see that IRENA 2022 report for the US.
'How are they defining & counting "emissions free"?'
Is that a rhetorical question? Or are you pushing a narrative? Are you suggesting they are defining away huge discrepancies, discrepancies you claim exist without attribution? It's very clear how they are getting their 40% number, now let's see how you're getting your 20% one.
60% dirty is an F (Score:2)
Re: 60% dirty is an F (Score:2)
hurray? (Score:2)
max vs min (Score:2)
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Well, the sun is always shining somewhere.
If you always use the most expensive solution to a problem, that gives you the cost of the worse case scenario. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be expensive. There can be objections to transmission lines. And batteries do cost cash. But what you need to do is to work out a reasonable case, based on a more realistic model. Sun and wind often complement, "somewhere" often turns out to be not so far away; and some power will remain highly dispatchable (biogas for exa
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They conspicuously failed compliment here, that was rather the point. The German's discovered this as well, they came up with the word dunkelflaute to describe it.
I see my previous post is marked troll for reporting actual facts. This does not surprise me. Fortunately as the graph shows we have hydroelectric power. But what about those who live in similar climate zones where they do not?
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
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We build connectivity to places that do have hydro and add batteries.
For example, consider the UK and Norway. The UK has an excess of wind power, which Norway can buy for cheap. Norway has an excess of hydro power but not energy; they can supply the power to the UK when needed, because the wind power allows them to conserve the water for when it is needed. Or Denmark/UK which has just added new interlink.
Add in rooftop solar. Add interconnect to the south of Europe. Add in batteries.
That still leaves long t
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To power through that sort of situation (537,000 MW-hrs needed) would take 137,435 Tesla Max power batteries with a total weight of 58 Nimitz class aircraft carriers. Got lithium?
If only transmission lines existed!
Either way, when Tesla famously installed the "world's largest battery" which news organisations kept on parroting blindly, there was already a larger battery in Japan. Tesla had installed the world's largest lithium ion battery. There's more than enough raw materials for grid scale batteries.
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Moving to gas from coal is better than sticking with coal. But, it also means a long term investment that will lock in fossil fuel generation.
Moving to wind, solar and storage would be better still.
Re: natural gas is better than coal (Score:2)